


The Adventures of Julia and Military Service

by kayliemalinza



Series: The Brooklyn Buchanans [11]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-29 01:57:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7665889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayliemalinza/pseuds/kayliemalinza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Originally <a href="http://kayliemalinza.tumblr.com/post/89888085981/when-bucky-gets-back-from-basic-training-he-and">posted on Tumblr</a>.</p></blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally [posted on Tumblr](http://kayliemalinza.tumblr.com/post/89888085981/when-bucky-gets-back-from-basic-training-he-and).

when bucky gets back from basic training, he and his mother julia go down to the family farm in toe river, north carolina for a week’s visit.  
  
bucky’s proud of his new sniper skills, and julia’s proud of his new skills, too, and he’s being charming and instructive and little patronizing, like, say, mama, how about i set up some wooden targets out by the creek and i can teach you how to shoot some  
  
(part of basic training seems to be the installation of man-dumb in an otherwise clever and observant person.)  
  
(someone has clearly forgotten about aunt rhoda joking about huntin’ for dinner. someone has forgotten that it wasn’t his dad who kept a rifle under the bed.)  
  
but it’s a nice spring day and they need some mother-son bonding time and julia likes it when handsome young men teach her how to shoot. it’s nostalgic:  
  
back when she was a secretary for a military officer, before she got knocked up and married and had to leave, before the great war ended and the army pared down its numbers and the servicemen came home and wanted their desk jobs back, she liked to wander over to the shooting range during lunch and watch the men shoot. she and her nylons caused a few flubs that got the boys yelled at, but shooting straight in the midst of distracting circumstances is crucial for a soldier, you know  
  
and sometimes, when the supervising officers wandered off, she could coyly ask for some shooting lessons.  
  
she’d shoot a little under her skill level, soaking up the instruction and the feel of the stock in her hands again and the butt against her shoulder and the warmth of handsome men at her back and side.  
  
she gets distracted, too. gets over it.  
  
she aims at her own bull’s eyes–three inches left of the center, or right on the border between the red and white markings, or (her favorite) two solemn shots right where the tips of the long and short hand would be, if the target were a clock.  
  
not a single soldier caught onto her game, bless their hearts.  
  
but today, this isn’t just some soldier–this is her baby boy, broad-shouldered and tan on the neck and cleverer than he thinks anybody knows.  
  
so they’re shooting a little, and bucky’s being sweet and encouraging because julia’s getting close to the bull’s eye, but then she swings away and he tries to knock the barrel back up with his thumb. “no, mama, you’re way off.”  
  
“just let me try it,” she says.  
  
“you’re not even close–” too late. julia’s fired, and missed by a mile; she didn’t even hit the target. bucky sighs. “that was just a waste of a bullet.”  
  
julia shrugs, hands him the rifle and walks out over to the creek bed. she pokes around in the brush beneath the target and then pulls up a rabbit with a neat hole in its head.  
  
“you’re right,” she says. “this bullet would’ve been much more useful in that piece of wood over there.”  
  
bucky’s staring, of course, and maybe there’s a smidgen of a pout.  
  
“don’t worry, i won’t make you eat any of this if you don’t want,” she says, sauntering past him up to the house.  
  
“no…. i want it….” bucky says, and trudges along behind her because he’s not gonna pass up a good plate of meat for anything.  
  
(when he gets back from his first tour a year later, when he’s spent time in the trenches with his belly caving in, he asks her–what’s the trick to shooting rabbits? that’s as good for the war as shooting nazis, i reckon.  
  
so they go down to toe river again, and she teaches him, and the next time the howling commandos tramp fifty miles through enemy territory they do it with bellies full of stew instead of dry rations.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally [posted on Tumblr](http://kayliemalinza.tumblr.com/post/91888432391/lets-talk-about-julias-career-in-the-military).

let’s talk about julia’s career in the military, shall we?  
  
as aforementioned: when julia buchanan first got to new york, she worked as a secretary during the day and taught english to immigrants at night.  
  
she was a secretary to a military officer, and that was how she moved into mr. barnes’ orbit (or at least, how she was able to track him down after their orbits gleefully overlapped and then parted ways after a couple of weeks) and part of her work as that officer’s secretary was translating telegrams and reports, etc.  
  
when she gets knocked up and married she has to leave the service, making pocket money through freelance translations and whatnot rather than full-time secretary duties  
  
(the “whatnot” will be a whole ‘nother post; we’re talking strictly about her _military_ career at this point in time, though there is some overlap later.)  
  
julia’s a good military wife, helping her husband through the ranks and keeping in contact with the other military wives and her husband’s colleagues, commanding officers, etc.  
  
when mr. barnes dies in a training accident, she maintains those relationships, helped along by the monthly trip to collect the pension check–she used to go along to keep sarah company when she collected hers, and now they’re both going, with sarah taking charge those first few awful months to cut through the red tape  
  
 but then, of course, the second world war happens  
  
you know how captain america’s purpose in the beginning, as part of the USO, was to encourage people to help out with the war effort?  
  
well it  
  
worked  
  
steve comes home after the transformation to get his affairs in order before he heads off on the USO tour and startles the living daylights out of mrs. barnes. to be fair she startled him, first, busting through his front door with her rifle cocked wondering why this meatball is rooting around the rogers residence  
  
(it didn’t help that steve lost his key and hadn’t left a spare under a brick when he went off to camp lehigh, and still wasn’t used to his own strength so he kind of. broke the door handle.)  
  
julia recognizes his face and his voice but near about shoots him anyway because how the hell does a person process this kind of thing? she’d heard about the ruckus just a few blocks away but she didn’t know it was steve.  
  
so this was the first time steve got to explain what happened, and mrs. barnes just kept staring at him and didn’t say anything. finally steve puttered out and sat down on the couch, trying to be small again  
  
(steve ends up having to explain to all the neighborhood people, probably, which explains why by the time he gets to azzano he has his sassy answers down pat: “i joined the army” is the quickest way to get the corner grocer off your back, and he’s plenty willing to explain things better to bucky but not at this particular point in time, i’m a little busy with these explosions and all.  
  
steve had asked mrs. barnes not to tell bucky, of course, asked her please, let me tell him myself  
  
–hey, steve, how come that never happened? all those months out on the USO circuit, and you couldn’t write a letter? delivering mail wasn’t easy out in the field of war but it was still _doable_.  
  
bucky’s gonna ask him that. not angrily, not repeatedly, just a quiet aside between sips of brandy and steve’s gonna carry it around beneath his ribs for months  
  
yeah, bucky is his mother’s son, alright.)  
  
right but i was talking about how julia got back into the military  
  
during those few days steve has to pack up his entire life and let go of the only home he’s had–even after sarah died, he held onto the lease with tooth and nail. and though sometimes bucky would live there between other apartments, steve’s never lived anyplace else. so it’s a pretty tall order, as painful as being blasted with vita-rays, honestly.  
  
but this time, julia’s there with him. it’s a nice bonding experience, despite how bittersweet and fraught it is. this is a final goodbye to sarah, with steve finally letting go of all her things (not that she had much) and picking out a few small souvenirs to keep, and julia getting to pick some things, too–  
  
and steve feels bad about that, realizes he should’ve offered years ago, but he was a dumb grieving kid and he left mrs. barnes out in the cold to mourn her best friend alone. he still chews on that years and years later, a persistent pang of guilt to remind him to put other people’s pain before his own.  
  
when it comes time to leave he almost chokes. julia notices and maybe there’s some hair-touching here, the kind of doting physical affection steve’s never gotten used to and still doesn’t like that much–but bucky’s not here and julia misses him and steve misses him and steve was supposed to stay, was supposed to take care of mrs. barnes, _he made a promise_ –  
  
julia shushes him. there’s promises and duties and then there’s purpose. this is what he’s meant to do. don’t worry about me, honey. i can make it on my own.  
  
maybe she doesn’t have any kind of divine inspiration, but she has two hands and a good head on her shoulders and she can do good work with 'em, so after steve leaves for his tour, julia takes herself up to the base and enlists again.  
  
she does about the same thing as she did before–a secretary in a slightly elevated capacity, doing translation work and thereby accessing sensitive military documents, intercepted telegrams, enemy correspondence, etc.  
  
she goes to stay with her sister rhoda in d.c., i think, so she’s working at a fairly high level, or at least adjacent to high level strategic officers. she briefs people who brief people who brief the president, that kind of thing. there are a lot of hugely important memos with “JBB” inscribed at the bottom.  
  
she’s not sent abroad, yet, but she does move into codecracking. she has the aptitude for it, and fluency in multiple languages is kind of a plus when you’re decoding messages from the european theater.  
  
of course, she specializes in correspondence intercepted from italian speaking regions.  
  
what i’m getting at is  
  
julia buchanan barnes is the first person to learn that the 107th were taken prisoner at azzano and what’s happening to them.  
  
there’t not much she can do after passing it up to her superiors, except translate as many communiques as quickly and as accurately as she can, hoping to find some intel soon enough to make a difference. even worse, she has do this while maintaining an image of professional detachment because her commanding officer doesn’t know that her son is in that prisoner group, and if he did he’d surely move her off that assignment, and she wouldn’t hear anything more.  
  
this is happening fairly quickly–i don’t know how long they’ve been held prisoner before steve busts in, but considering that colonel philips was just then drafting the condolence letters, i don’t think it was very long  
  
(unless he was drafting them in response to new intel, fresh from the codebreakers, that the prisoners were being executed, or experimented on, or simply worked to death.)  
  
fortunately, we know how this story ends: captain rogers swoops in for the rescue, all the men make it out, bucky is finally informed that his childhood best friend is now a meatball, and the howling commandos are formed.  
  
steve and bucky probably find out pretty quickly that mrs. barnes is back in the service, though they have a very limited awareness of what she’s doing, exactly. while the howling commandos are duckfacing into hydra facilities across europe, julia is moving higher up in the ranks, becoming a more skilled and valuable codebreaker, garnering attention from various officers. she and agent carter are at least handshake familiar with each other (which makes steve nervous and a little eager: d'ya like her, mrs. barnes? isn’t she swell?)  
  
then, sometime in 1944–a year after steve got big and a year before he goes down in the arctic–julia starts getting sent on undercover missions abroad.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally [posted on Tumblr](http://kayliemalinza.tumblr.com/post/91896153961/continued-from-part-1-sometime-in-1944a-year).

sometime in 1944–a year after steve got big and a year before he goes down in the arctic–julia starts getting sent on undercover missions abroad.

on one particular mission, julia keeps getting deeper and deeper, traveling into enemy territory to get the best intel, coordinating with native resistance fighters and passing among the populace–then the town she’s in is suddenly taken over by martial law. she’s pinned down, just enough time to get out a coded S.O.S.  
  
she’s sitting on some really important intelligence, crucial to the war effort, so colonel philips gets his orders. yes, mr. president, i’ll send in the howling commandos.  
  
three days later the howling commandos are hunkered at the treeline, scoping out the guard patterns and weak points to deploy explosions. dernier pats his bag of dynamite, grins, and trundles off. dum dum and morita head east along the perimeter; falsworth goes west. steve and bucky stay put, watching the main convoy of guards. gabe hangs back.  
  
cap’s arguing with bucky about the feasibility of a single-man infiltration versus a full-out attack when he interrupts himself to listen to the woods.  
  
“what’s going on?” bucky whispers.  
  
cap puts a hand to his ear, then points someplace just behind gabe.  
  
bucky listens, too, and hears a low whistle: _put a feather in his cap and called it–_  
  
they crawl back from the treeline, gabe still watching their rear, and find the missing agent crouched beneath a bush.  
  
“you boys looking for me?” she says. the words are chipper but her voice is flat, worn down, shaved as close as her head.  
  
the scalp is split and bleeding above her left ear.  
  
“how did you escape?” the captain asks.  
  
“crawled out a window,” she answers. “it’d be best to quietly go back the way you came, don’t you think? rather than shooting and causing a fuss.”  
  
so they do, using whistles and signals to pull all the commandos back from their posts.  
  
“what about the rest of the civilians?” gabe asks.  
  
“we can’t save a whole town,” morita whispers back.  
  
the agent–mrs. barnes–scuffs her boots in the dirt, old things with the laces wrapped three times around the ankles. she’s wearing men’s trousers under her dress, folded six inches deep at the cuff and shoved down the boot shafts. “the troops are leaving the civilians alone for the most part. they just want food and beds, and–” she flutters her fingers at the buttons of her cardigan. “so long as everyone’s friendly and cooperates, they’re fine,” she says.  
  
bucky stares at the blood speckled dark down her front and doesn’t say anything.  
  
“alright,” says steve. “our orders were just to rescue the agent; let’s get moving.”  
  
they move out. julia lags behind for twenty feet, then falls altogether, and cap slings her over his shoulders.  
  
“she’s fine,” he tells bucky. he has his fingers wrapped around her wrist and he can feel her pulse.  
  
bucky sticks close by, his shoulder brushing against his mother’s feet.  
  
she wakes up six miles later and tries to climb off cap’s shoulders like they’re a sofa arm she fell asleep on. “are we out of range?” she mumbles as steve sets her carefully on her feet. “i need to make a report.”  
  
“you need to rest,” bucky says, with a voice he hasn’t used since steve was small and wanted to walk to the druggist in twenty degree weather just to get the baby some cough syrup.  
  
julia squeezes his arm above the elbow. _i heard you, honey, but_ “this is urgent. i have information the allies need as soon as possible. lives depend on it.”  
  
gabe sets up the wireless and she hunkers next to it, speaking in code with contacts in safe territory, switching channels every few minutes. the wind picks up and she shivers so bad her words break up. bucky lays a blanket over her shoulder and hunkers down behind her to block the wind. dernier gives her his beret.  
  
when she’s passed on the most urgent intel, when they’ve pushed the bounds of safe broadcasting, they turn the wireless off. julia scrounges around. “anybody got something to write on?”  
  
cap hands her something out of his bag.  
  
“oh, steve. not your good paper.”  
  
“take it,” he says. “the information you have is more important than my doodles. and i can get more, anyway,” he says. there’s a war on and there’s rationing and lots of industries have been disrupted–but yeah, captain american can get more drawing paper.  
  
julia jots down neat shorthand, peppered with codewords that her colleagues back at the SSR will be able to decipher if something happens; if she can’t be debriefed in person.  
  
they make it another fifteen miles before morita whistles a warning. enemy incoming. they stash julia in some hollow like a baby deer and go fifty feet off to draw the fire. they come back and find three bodies at varying distances, bleeding into the underbrush. crows come in.  
  
“stole this off a private on my way out,” julia says, waving a pistol and a weak smile.  
  
sergeant barnes helps his mother up out of the dirt and they keep walking.  
  
–  
  
night falls. bucky draws her into the dark beyond the campfire.  
  
“take my spare shirt,” he says.  
  
julia turns her back to him but don’t go far, doesn’t put a tree or too much distance between her and a friendly.  
  
she eases her cardigan off, tender-awkward because of bruises, hairline fractures, swollen joints and _i’m too old for this_. the front of her dress falls open, ripped to the waist.  
  
bucky doesn’t say anything. he saw the damage before, showing beneath the hem of her sweater.  
  
she shucks the dress, folds it sloppy, hands it backwards to bucky. “it’s not that bad,” she whispers. “it was my idea, honestly. tactical diversion.”  
  
“is that where you got the gun?” he asks.  
  
julia nods; her bristle gleams like grass in sidewalk cracks. “and the window. he–there was a house near the stables on the east edge of town. i didn’t know you were coming, so i was going to make out on my own. i was heading for the horses when i spotted that magnificent mustache.”  
  
bucky huffs. on a different day it’d be a laugh, maybe. “i’ll let dum-dum know he’s not as stealthy as he thinks.”  
  
julia tucks his shirt into her trousers and slides the cardigan back on, slim knit sleeves cinching weirdly over the bulky cloth beneath. she nestles dernier’s beret back on her naked head. “what’s for dinner?” she asks.  
  
“crackers.”  
  
“sounds delicious,” she says, with a smile she perfected in front of store windows in a nice part of town. “i can’t wait.”  
  
dinner’s alright. mrs. barnes has met some of boys before, and she tries to pick up months-old conversations between bites of dry rations.  
  
she teaches dum-dum how to cook small game, discovers morita’s father was a sailor, tells gabe how the trees were blooming in D.C. when she left. her french is limited but growing; gabe expounds on _le subjonctif_ and dernier teaches her new idioms. every once in a while gabe halts him mid-word (dernier, this is a _lady_ ) and she responds with a cool stream of dirty italian that makes bucky choke.  
  
these are all brief moments, spackling over deep gouges of silence. sometimes they say things to her and don’t know if they register. she stares, silent, revealing nothing, mouth flat and body still.  
  
bucky sees rabbits stare at him like that, just before he shoots them for dinner.  
  
when the fire dies down, he puts her bedroll near his and they stare at each other through the first watch, a silent conversation of gazes in the middle distance. they both recognize darkness in each other, a hardness they suspected but hadn’t confirmed until now. a silent communication in the absence of any steves or sarahs. the coda of a hand on his shoulder, a silent squeeze. _don’t ask me anything more._


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally [posted on Tumblr](http://kayliemalinza.tumblr.com/post/93171985221/sometime-in-the-middle-of-the-war-julia-barnes).

sometime in the middle of the war, julia barnes walks into the map room with a stack of decoded telegrams and hears her son say, “it flew twenty feet, swear to god.”

“what flew twenty feet?” she asks.

morita becomes engrossed in the linoleum and dum-dum clears his throat.

“this nazi’s brains, over in warsaw,” bucky says. “i sniped him right through the eyeball.” he grins small and bland and various people in the room have conniption fits or cross their chests in prayer.

julia stares at him for a long moment, doing morse code in the pulse at her neck. then she beams. “that’s my good boy,” she says, and pinches bucky’s cheek.


End file.
